Written by Saturday, October 1, 2022.
After a night that seemed not quite long enough, it was time to get up for a new day, a new month. It was the first day of October and the unavoidable winds had wrung most of the water from the swirling clouds left by the storm that was Hurricane Ian. It was time for Ohio Hockey, game two of the weekend.
This image. These colors, in this combination. Still gets my heart going. © 1inawesomewonder 2022.
I don’t typically feel all that important, but on this Saturday morning there was a little bit of an important jump in my step. See, I had a parking pass from the University of Delaware for Saturday morning’s hockey game. These passes were necessary, I found out later, because the entire Delaware campus is one huge tailgating party when they have a ‘home’ football game. Which they did on October 1st. I have known of the prestige earned by the Blue Hens football program for many years, but to see the event spread out over the campus on a less than perfect weather day, it was pretty impressive. Oh, and the parking pass, well that was denied by security (despite my pleas) when I tried to enter at the specific gates that were specified on the parking pass for this very specific hockey game on the schedule. That’s how important I was.
Anyways, I found parking across the main road that runs around the Delaware campus. In a scene that I would describe as something like a very ‘beginner’s’ version of the game Frogger, I made my way from the parking lot across the lanes of traffic (not too much) to the rink parking lot. I still made it in time to see the Zamboni finish the final laps of prepping the ice surface.
I wasn’t sure quite what to expect during a 10:00 am start for a college hockey game. Especially after leaving the rink only 12 hours before after a hard fought, 5-1, marathon of a game that lasted almost three hours the night before. I felt tired and beat up and I didn’t do anything in the game the night before except for standing in various locations staring through a camera lens trying to get good pictures of high-speed action peering through blemished Plexiglas. But then again, it was about the teams, the players, not me.
This was the ‘next goal’ that gave Ohio a 3-0 lead with 10:00 left to play in the game. © 1inawesomewonder 2022.
Finally, the puck dropped for Ohio Hockey, game two. Almost predictably, the teams were scoreless after the first period. But the play was solid from both teams. Ohio had the edge in shots on goal by an 11-8 count through one period. The game opened up a bit more in the middle period, with Ohio netting two goals, and the teams combining for 25 shots on goal. The Bobcats led, 2-0 after two periods. In the final period, the ‘next goal’ was critical. There is a huge difference between a 2-1 lead and a 3-0 lead and it’s magnified by the fact the visitors had already won game one of the weekend. Ohio got the ‘next goal’ and then another one en route to an impressive, if not surgical, 4-0 win.
Ohio certainly had plenty of plenty of practice working on their penalty kill units over the weekend. What I saw was that this team has four solid lines, great defense and very good goaltending. If they are able to maintain a high percentage of ‘even-strength’ minutes in games, I would expect them to be very competitive in every game they play. It was a real treat for me to be there in attendance and watch these players continue their career, if not fulfill some dreams of hockey playing kids that just want to play at the highest level they can for as long someone will let them.
Here is a link to the YouTube broadcast of Saturday morning’s game.
I took a whole bunch of pictures over the two games. Here is a gallery of many pictures from Game 2 at the University of Delaware. Please feel free to click on the pictures to open them up, zoom in, and have a look around. Thank you.
(You can check out Game 1 of the weekend here)
Game 2 at Delaware
